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NIMBYs are an embarrassment

What next? Victorian dress codes enforced by unelected roving gangs of tastemakers?

Re: Resident’s upset with mayor’s tolerance message (News May 18).

Oh bother. It’s silly season again.

As the only non-NIMBY attendee at the first council meeting ambush by the local Oak Bay Creative Anachronism Society, I can report that Mayor Jensen and his staff and council were more than accommodating of these Edwardian time travellers.

The fact that they ambushed a second council meeting suggests that they are either remarkably obtuse or they are scofflaws.

Now this group of self-appointed city parents are staging huff-and-puff gatherings in front of the homes of private citizens. What next? Victorian dress codes enforced by unelected roving gangs of tastemakers? (If they come to my house, I will call Oak Bay’s finest for fear they will trample my Charter rights and perhaps my flowers … but I suppose they won’t since I have an old house.)

Incidentally, last week I was in a lawyer’s office on business in Vancouver. On a coffee break I noticed a news clipping on their staff bulletin board about Oak Bay’s latest struggles … I will not repeat the comments scrawled all over it. I felt embarrassed for Oak Bay.

We have nothing to fear except fear of narrow-mindedness. For those of us that can, consider giving your open-minded attention to the current planning process and try giving your support for a vital, multigenerational, sustainable interesting future, not a sad, xenophobic little Disneyland suburb.

David Wilkinson

Oak Bay